Commit Be Do: Women’s Leadership Secret

By Stacey St. John, Certified Stagnation Assassin Consultant
Author of LIVE BIG: An Entrepreneur’s Playbook to Boss Up Your Business, Show Up for Yourself, and Step into Your Dream Life

Forget everything you think you know about CBD.

This isn’t about calming down your anxious cat or treating your sore muscles. This CBD is a different kind of remedy, a cure for the uninspired, the stuck, and the “I-wish-I-could-but-I-can’t” mentality.

This CBD stands for Commit, Be, Do. It’s a triple-threat formula for taking your dreams and turning them into reality.

And if you’re a woman leading in corporate America, navigating the broken rung, the double-bind, and the constant pressure to prove you belong, this isn’t just a nice framework to know. It’s the operating system that changes everything.

Let me show you why.

The Three Operating Modes (And Why Most People Are Stuck in the Wrong One)

Whether you realize it or not, you’re operating in one of three modes right now. And the one you’re in is determining the results you’re getting.

Mode 1: Have-Do-Be

“When I have the title, I’ll do executive things, and then I’ll be a leader.”

This is the default for most people. It sounds logical. It feels safe. And it’s a trap.

Have-Do-Be says: “Show me the evidence first. Give me the promotion, the revenue, the recognition, and then I’ll start behaving like the person who earned it.”

The problem? You’re waiting for external validation before you give yourself internal permission. You’re asking the world to see you as a leader before you’ve decided to see yourself as one.

And for women in corporate environments, this trap has teeth. McKinsey’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report, now in its eleventh year, found that only half of companies are still prioritizing women’s career advancement, part of a several-year trend in declining corporate commitment to gender diversity. For the first time in the study’s history, women are less interested in being promoted than men, not because they lack ambition, but because the institutional pipeline has failed to deliver on its promises.

If you’re waiting for institutional permission to lead, you’re playing a game that’s rigged against you. Have-Do-Be is a losing strategy, especially for women.

Mode 2: Do-Have-Be

“If I do enough work, I’ll have success, and then I’ll be someone.”

This is hustle culture in disguise. It says: “Outwork everyone. Grind harder. Stay later. Take on more. Eventually, the results will come, and then you’ll feel like you’ve made it.”

Do-Have-Be creates exhausted overachievers who burn out before they break through. It’s the mode that keeps women working seven days a week, winning awards, generating results, and still feeling like they’re not enough.

I know this one intimately. Before I discovered CBD, I was caught in Do-Have-Be at Scripps Media, top-producing strategist in the entire country, awards galore, healthy commissions rolling in. I was a woman on fire. Until my boss, Stephanie Cooper, looked at me with concern and said, “Stacey, you’re running on fumes. If you don’t recharge, you’ll burn out faster than a Black Friday sale.”

She was right. All the doing in the world wasn’t making me be the person I wanted to become. It was just making me tired.

Mode 3: Commit-Be-Do

“I commit to my outcome. I be the person who achieves it, starting now. And then I do what that person does.”

This is the revolution.

CBD flips the entire script. Instead of waiting for evidence before you start leading, you commit to the outcome, embody the identity of the person who achieves it, and then take the actions that identity demands.

No waiting. No permission. No “I’ll start acting like a VP when I get the VP title.”

You start now.

Why the Pipeline Problem Demands a Personal Solution

Before we go deeper into the mechanics of CBD, let’s be clear about the landscape women are navigating.

The data is sobering. According to the McKinsey and LeanIn.Org 2024 Women in the Workplace report, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women receive the same opportunity. For Black women, that number drops to 54. For Latinas, it fell to its lowest point ever at 65. At the current pace, it will take 22 years for white women to achieve leadership parity, and more than twice as long for women of color.

These aren’t just numbers. They represent thousands of women who are told, implicitly and explicitly, that the path forward requires waiting. Waiting for a sponsor. Waiting for a stretch assignment. Waiting for someone to notice.

But here’s what the data also reveals: when women receive the same career support that men do, sponsorship, manager advocacy, and access to stretch opportunities, the ambition gap disappears entirely. The desire to lead isn’t the problem. The system’s failure to support that desire is.

This is precisely why CBD is so powerful. It doesn’t require institutional permission. It doesn’t depend on whether your company has a robust women’s leadership pipeline. It starts and ends with a personal decision to commit to who you’re becoming, regardless of external conditions.

That’s not naive optimism. That’s strategic self-determination.

Why Your Brain Defaults to Have-Do-Be (And How CBD Overrides It)

Here’s the neuroscience behind the trap.

Your brain has two primary characters running the show. Your conscious mind is logical, ambitious, and focused. It’s the part of you that sets bold goals and wants to charge forward. But it’s small.

Your subconscious mind is massive, emotional, habit-driven, and controls approximately 95% of your behaviors and decisions. It stores memories, experiences, and learned behaviors, creating a huge reservoir of information that influences your daily life. Unlike the conscious mind, which processes information logically and analytically, the subconscious mind is more associative and emotional, linking feelings and experiences to create patterns that guide your actions.

Have-Do-Be aligns perfectly with how your subconscious processes the world, conservatively, based on past evidence, avoiding risk. It says, “Show me proof first.” It wants the safe, familiar path. It wants evidence that change is warranted before it’ll go along with the program.

CBD requires your conscious mind to override the subconscious’s programming. It requires you to commit before evidence exists. And that feels uncomfortable, because your subconscious mind resists it.

This is cognitive dissonance in action. Your conscious mind is saying “Let’s climb the mountain!” while your subconscious mind is saying “No way.”

So how do you get your subconscious mind to cooperate?

You don’t fight it. You reprogram it.

The Neuroscience of Identity Reprogramming

Research on self-directed neuroplasticity from the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience confirms that the brain’s structure and function can be consciously reshaped through intentional, self-initiated experiences. The researchers define self-directed neuroplasticity as “the modulation and reorganization of the brain’s plasticity through effortful and effortless self-control processes using self-initiated, tailored experiences to induce brain functional and structural changes.” In other words, you can deliberately rewire your neural pathways through practices like focused attention, visualization, and intentional behavior change.

This isn’t abstract theory. UCLA Health psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has demonstrated through clinical research that conscious practices of relabeling, reframing, and refocusing attention produce measurable brain changes. As he explains in his research featured on UCLA Health: “This is real self-directed neuroplasticity. You’re using relabeling, reframing and making choices about what to focus your attention on, and when you do that regularly, it changes your brain.”

Every time you practice CBD, committing to an identity, embodying it daily, and acting from it, you’re pouring concrete on a new neural road. At first, it’s a dirt path. But with repetition, it becomes a highway. And the old Have-Do-Be highway? It starts to deteriorate from disuse.

This same mechanism explains the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies. The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business Lead Read Today research review confirms that high expectations from leaders consistently boost subordinate performance through a cycle of reinforcing behavior and belief. The mechanism works identically in the relationship you have with yourself: expect more, behave accordingly, and the results follow.

Most women leaders are trapped in negative self-fulfilling prophecies: “I’m not ready for this role” → behaves tentatively → gets passed over → “See? I wasn’t ready.” CBD creates positive self-fulfilling prophecies: “I am a decisive, strategic leader” → behaves like one → produces leadership results → “See? That’s who I am.”

The mechanism is identical. The direction is opposite. And the results are transformative.

The Identity Gap That Institutions Can’t Close

Harvard Business Review published a landmark article, “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers” by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb, that fundamentally reframed the conversation about why women’s leadership development programs so often fail to produce results. The core finding is striking: even when CEOs make gender diversity a priority, setting aspirational goals, insisting on diverse slates, and developing mentoring programs, they are often frustrated by a lack of progress because they haven’t addressed the fundamental identity shift involved in coming to see oneself, and to be seen by others, as a leader.

The authors identified what they called “second-generation gender bias”, the subtle, often invisible barriers that are embedded in organizational cultures and practices. Unlike first-generation bias (overt discrimination), second-generation bias operates through patterns that appear neutral on the surface but systematically disadvantage women. This includes the tendency to equate leadership with behaviors considered more common in men, which suggests, without ever stating it, that women are simply not cut out to lead.

What makes this research so relevant to CBD is the article’s central argument: the learning cycle at the heart of becoming a leader is disrupted for women by these invisible barriers. Women must establish credibility in a culture that is deeply conflicted about whether, when, and how they should exercise authority. The standard approach of “develop the skills first, and the identity will follow” doesn’t work. The identity work must come first, or at the very least, simultaneously.

This is exactly what CBD demands. By committing to the identity of a leader before external validation arrives, women bypass the institutional gatekeeping that the HBR research documents so thoroughly.

Herminia Ibarra expanded on this insight in her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press), where she argues that the most effective way to change is through action, not analysis, and by learning from experience, not introspection. Her core thesis, that you should act your way into a new way of thinking rather than think your way into a new way of acting, is the academic parallel to CBD. You don’t analyze your way to confidence. You commit, embody, act, and the confidence follows.

The 4-Step CBD Operating System

Here’s the complete technical manual for implementing Commit-Be-Do in your leadership life.

Step 1: COMMIT

Declare your outcome with zero hedge language.

This means removing words from your vocabulary. The first word we’re removing is “try.”

There’s a world of difference between trying to do something and committing to do it. Commitment isn’t just a mindset, it’s a roadmap. It keeps you focused, provides direction, and fuels your motivation. Even when the going gets tough, commitment ensures you’re ready to put in the time, sweat, and resources to get to your endgame.

Remove “try.” Remove “maybe.” Remove “hopefully.” Remove “I think I can.” Remove “we’ll see.”

Replace them with declarations:

“I am committed to leading this division to $50M in revenue.”

“I am committed to being the kind of leader people want to follow.”

“I am committed to this promotion, not waiting for it, but earning it through who I am every day.”

Commitment is your trusty shield against obstacles and your ticket through hard times. It’s the building blocks of discipline and consistency, forming a routine and structure that’s vital for progress.

The What and Why Exercise:

What sets your soul on fire, and why? What do you want your career or business to achieve, and why? Is it financial freedom? Why does that matter to you? Do you want to make a difference in the world? Why is that a priority for you?

Write it down. Pin it to your mirror. Shout it from the rooftops if you have to. Clarity on your “what” and “why” is the foundation of unshakable commitment.

Here’s an important tip: make sure your “why” is tied to more than just money. Connect it to something that brings you true joy, something that makes you feel fulfilled. That’s where the real magic happens.

Step 2: BE

Embody the identity daily.

This is where CBD separates from every other goal-setting framework. You don’t just set the goal and work toward it. You become the person who achieves it, starting today.

Ask yourself every morning: “What would the leader I’m becoming do right now?”

What would the CEO of a $10M company do in this meeting?

What would a VP who commands respect do when interrupted?

What would a confident, strategic executive do when facing this challenge?

Then do that thing. Even if it feels uncomfortable. Even if your subconscious mind is saying doubts like, “But we’ve never done this before!” on repeat.

This is where identity transformation gets real. The HBR research by Ibarra, Ely, and Kolb showed that subtle “second-generation gender bias” still present in organizations disrupts the learning cycle at the heart of becoming a leader. The identity shift required to see yourself, and be seen by others, as a leader gets interrupted by systemic barriers that most women can’t even name.

CBD is the self-directed bypass of that institutional gatekeeping. You don’t wait for the organization to see you as a leader. You see yourself as one first. And then the organization catches up.

Step 3: DO

Take the actions that your new identity demands, not the actions your current identity is comfortable with.

This is the critical distinction. Your current identity has a comfort zone. It has familiar behaviors, safe choices, and well-worn routines. CBD doesn’t ask you to do more of what you’re already doing. It asks you to do what the next-level version of you would do.

If you’re a director operating in CBD, you’re not just doing director work better. You’re making VP-level decisions, building VP-level relationships, and demonstrating VP-level strategic thinking.

If you’re running a $5M P&L in CBD, you’re not just managing $5M well. You’re managing it like a $50M operator, with the systems, the rigor, and the strategic vision that scale demands.

If you’re negotiating your salary in CBD, you’re not negotiating from your current title. You’re negotiating like someone who already has the offer, because in your identity, you do.

The McKinsey 2025 Women in the Workplace study found that entry-level women are starting their careers with less support and fewer opportunities than their male peers. Compared to entry-level men, women are less likely to have a sponsor (31% versus 45%) and less likely to get promoted (30% versus 43%). Only 37% of entry-level women believe AI will improve their career prospects, compared to 60% of employees overall, in part because only 21% of entry-level women are being encouraged by managers to use new tools and technologies.

This is the Have-Do-Be trap at the institutional level, women waiting for institutional encouragement to develop skills, versus CBD-operating women who develop skills first because that’s what the leader they’re becoming would do.

Step 4: REPEAT

CBD is a daily operating system, not a one-time motivation exercise.

Every morning, you recommit. Every day, you practice being. Every interaction, you choose the actions of your future identity.

Some days it’ll feel natural. Some days your subconscious will fight you hard. Some days your inner critic will lie and tell you you’re a fraud. That’s normal. Refuse to accept it, declare “I am done with that,” and recommit.

The beauty of CBD is that it compounds. The more you practice it, the more natural it becomes. The dirt road becomes a two-lane street. The two-lane street becomes a highway. And one day, you realize you’re not practicing being a leader anymore.

You just are one.

The Neuroscience of Habit and Why CBD Requires Conscious Override

Understanding why CBD feels difficult at first requires understanding how habits form in the brain. Research published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience on the role of the basal ganglia in habit formation demonstrates that as behaviors become habitual, control shifts from the prefrontal cortex, responsible for conscious decision-making, to the basal ganglia, a deeper brain structure that operates automatically and efficiently. This is why habits feel effortless: your brain has literally moved the processing to a region that requires less energy.

This explains both why old patterns are so hard to break and why CBD requires daily, conscious practice. When you operate in Have-Do-Be mode, you’re running on the well-worn basal ganglia pathways your brain built over years of conditioning. Switching to CBD requires engaging the prefrontal cortex to override those automatic patterns, which is exactly why it feels uncomfortable and energy-intensive at first.

But here’s the good news. Research from ScienceDirect on self-directed neuroplasticity confirms that “self-directed neuroplasticity involves an intentional process of physically altering the brain’s structure through techniques that enhance self-awareness, focused attention, and purposeful efforts.” In other words, the more you practice CBD, the more you’re literally building new neural highways. Eventually, CBD-aligned behaviors move from prefrontal cortex processing (effortful) to basal ganglia processing (automatic).

This is the biological mechanism behind the experience every CBD practitioner reports: at first, it feels like acting. Eventually, it feels like being.

CBD Is NOT “Fake It Till You Make It”

Let me address this head-on, because I hear it all the time: “Isn’t CBD just fake it till you make it?”

No. And the distinction matters.

“Fake it till you make it” implies deception, pretending to be something you’re not until the pretense becomes reality. It’s rooted in inauthenticity, and your subconscious mind knows it. That’s why it never sticks.

CBD is practicing. There’s a huge difference.

Think about it this way: the organized person doesn’t wait for a clean desk to start organizing, they commit to being organized, and the desk follows. The confident speaker doesn’t wait for confidence before speaking, they commit to being confident and practice until the doing becomes second nature.

Let’s make this even more concrete. Think about parallel parking. You could recite the textbook method flawlessly, yet still find yourself locked in a sweaty battle with a curb downtown. The gap between knowledge and action is vast. Just like parallel parking becomes second nature after countless attempts, CBD requires practice, feedback, refinement, and more practice.

Grasping new concepts might come quickly, tempting us to believe instant execution is possible. But the reality is that we need practice. It’s a process of embracing imperfections, making mistakes, adjusting, and trying again. While slow and sometimes uncomfortable, the end result is a powerful transformation.

CBD isn’t fake. It’s deliberate identity construction. You’re not pretending to be someone you’re not. You’re practicing being someone you haven’t fully become yet. And that practice is what builds the neural pathways that make the identity permanent.

The “Outsight” Principle: Why Action Must Precede Identity

Herminia Ibarra’s research at London Business School and INSEAD offers a powerful academic validation of the CBD approach. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press), she introduces the concept of “outsight”, the external perspective gained from direct experience and experimentation that changes how you see yourself and your leadership potential.

Her core argument directly mirrors CBD: “The only way to think like a leader is to first act: to plunge yourself into new projects and activities, interact with very different kinds of people, and experiment with unfamiliar ways of getting things done.”

Ibarra’s research found that among executive program alumni who reported major changes in what was expected of them, only 47% had been promoted. The rest were expected to step up to bigger leadership roles while sitting in the same jobs with the same titles. This “do-it-yourself transition,” as Ibarra describes it, is exactly the situation CBD is designed for.

Traditional leadership development tells you to reflect deeply on your strengths and weaknesses, develop a plan, and then act. Ibarra’s research says the opposite: act first, and the identity follows. CBD takes this one step further: commit first, embody second, act third. The commitment anchors the action, and the action produces the identity.

This is why CBD is more robust than simple “act your way into thinking.” The commitment step creates an internal accountability structure. It’s the difference between casually trying new behaviors and making a declared promise to yourself about who you’re becoming. That commitment changes the emotional weight of every action that follows it.

Allie’s Cautionary Tale: Have-Do-Be in Action

Let me show you what happens when you don’t operate in CBD mode.

Allie was a superstar student in my STR Success Accelerator & Achievers Club programs. (I changed her name to protect her privacy.) Allie’s story is a masterclass in the perils of the Have-Do-Be approach.

Fueled by pure passion, Allie went into hyper-growth mode. She snapped up properties, dabbled in rental arbitrage, and managed bookings for other hosts. Impressive, right?

Not quite.

Allie unknowingly built her success on an unstable foundation. She neglected to set up a proper legal structure. Her rental agreements with guests were shaky at best. She was completely dependent on a single platform for bookings, a platform that can suspend your listing in an instant. Her co-hosting clients weren’t ideal partners, and she didn’t have proper agreements in place.

Here’s the core of the issue: Allie believed she needed to have a certain level of success first, a thriving portfolio and a roster of clients. Only then, she thought, could she do the work of building a strong foundation and finally be the CEO of a rock-solid business.

By the time we connected, Allie was drowning in the “fixing” stage. She had to scale back her portfolio, let go of clients, set up entity structures, and take a hit in profitability. Lawyers aren’t cheap, and a smaller portfolio meant less revenue.

Imagine the frustration, the lost time and money, all because Allie subscribed to the Have-Do-Be fallacy.

Had she flipped the script to CBD from day one:

She would have committed to her desired outcomes and been the person who prioritizes diversified revenue streams. She would have done what’s necessary to list her properties on multiple sites. Result: Less risk. Less stress.

She would have committed to building a rock-solid entity structure and been focusing on protecting her finances early. She would have done what’s necessary to keep that veil of protection solid. Result: Less risk. Less stress.

She would have committed to cultivating strong client relationships and been the person who has solid agreements in place. Result: Less risk. Less stress.

She would have had the energy and focus to do what truly matters, creating unforgettable experiences for her guests. Result: Better reviews and higher income.

See the pattern?

CBD in the Corporate Context: Specific Applications

Let me translate CBD into the specific scenarios women leaders face every day.

Application 1: Leading a Meeting Like a VP Before You Have the Title

Have-Do-Be version: “When I get promoted to VP, I’ll start leading strategic discussions and shaping organizational direction.”

CBD version: You walk into the next cross-functional meeting and contribute at the VP level. You don’t just present your department’s update, you connect it to the broader organizational strategy. You ask the questions a VP would ask: “How does this initiative align with our three-year plan?” “What’s the opportunity cost of not investing here?” “Who else needs to be in this conversation?”

You’re not overstepping. You’re demonstrating. And the people making promotion decisions notice the difference between someone waiting for the title and someone already operating at the level.

Application 2: Managing a P&L Like a $50M Operator When You’re at $5M

Have-Do-Be version: “When my business grows to $50M, I’ll implement sophisticated financial systems and strategic planning processes.”

CBD version: You build the infrastructure for $50M now. You create the dashboard, the reporting cadence, the financial review rhythm. You hire (or knowledge-hack) the financial expertise you need. You make decisions based on where you’re going, not where you are.

When I launched Kozy Getaways, my vacation rental management business, the big audacious goal was hitting $1 million in revenue. The moment I launched, I started holding weekly leadership team meetings, even though the only one on the team was “me, myself, and I.” I set time aside to meet with myself, review my goals, measure my progress, and create action steps to build the infrastructure, systems, and processes needed to support a million-dollar operation.

Did it work? In our second year, we blew past that million-dollar mark, bringing in $1,244,167 in revenue. But seeing that number on the financial report didn’t come as a surprise. The $1 million goal was always front and center, guiding every decision and every action. I wasn’t just grinding, I was building a business with intention, designed to grow and thrive.

That’s CBD. I committed to the million-dollar outcome. I was the CEO of a million-dollar operation from day one. And I did what a million-dollar CEO does.

Application 3: Negotiating Like Someone Who Already Has the Offer

Have-Do-Be version: “If they make me an offer, then I’ll negotiate from a position of strength.”

CBD version: You enter every negotiation, salary, budget, resource allocation, as someone who has already decided their worth. You don’t negotiate from desperation or gratitude. You negotiate from identity. “This is the value I bring. This is the investment this role requires. This is what the market says.”

CBD negotiation isn’t aggressive, it’s aligned. You’re not fighting for something you don’t believe you deserve. You’re stating what’s true about the person you’ve committed to being.

Why Women Are Building Their Own Path (And Why CBD Is the Engine)

The data on women’s entrepreneurship reveals something profound about what happens when women stop waiting for institutions and start committing to their own vision.

According to Gusto’s 2025 New Business Formation Report, women founded 49% of all new businesses in 2024, a 69% increase from 2019 and the highest rate in the report’s five-year history. Women entrepreneurs were 17% more likely than men to say they started their business because they wanted to be their own boss, and 30% more likely to say they wanted to work on their own schedule.

The World Economic Forum’s research on advancing gender parity in entrepreneurship estimates that closing the gender gap in employment and entrepreneurship could increase global GDP by 20%. McKinsey projects that advancing gender equality could add $12 trillion to the global economy.

These numbers represent millions of women who, consciously or not, are practicing CBD. They’re not waiting for corporate America to fix the broken rung. They’re committing to their vision, embodying the identity of an entrepreneur, and doing what founders do. The results, both individual and economic, speak for themselves.

This trend isn’t a rejection of corporate leadership; it’s a demonstration that when institutional paths are blocked, women don’t lose their ambition. They redirect it. And CBD provides the operating system for that redirection, whether you’re building within an organization or building your own.

The Mind’s Resistance (And How to Work With It)

I’d be doing you a disservice if I told you CBD was easy. It’s not.

Your powerful subconscious mind has been programmed by years of family expectations, cultural norms, societal messages, personal experiences, and institutional conditioning. It has a whole catalog of limiting beliefs ready to deploy the moment you try to commit to a new identity:

“Who do you think you are?”

“You need more experience before you can lead at that level.”

“People like us don’t do things like that.”

“What if you fail and everyone sees?”

These aren’t random thoughts. They’re your subconscious programming. They come from somewhere, family and upbringing, societal and cultural influences, personal experiences, education and media. They operate like a pair of sunglasses permanently fused to your face, tinting your vision and filtering the world through a specific color scheme.

The Stereotype Threat Connection

Research from ESSEC Business School on women’s careers and self-fulfilling prophecies reveals a critical mechanism that makes CBD even more important for women leaders. The concept of “stereotype threat” shows that when people worry about being the target of a negative stereotype, there’s an increased likelihood that they will underperform in the stereotyped domain. The researchers found that career development programs for women can actually backfire by making gender stereotypes a self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforcing the very limitations they aim to dismantle.

The study identifies a powerful antidote: exposure to successful role models who defy the stereotype. Experiments showed that when women were exposed to highly successful female role models, it empowered them in leadership tasks. CBD creates this effect from the inside out. When you commit to being a decisive, strategic leader, you become your own role model. You generate the internal evidence that breaks the stereotype threat cycle.

Here’s the paradox of limiting beliefs: they operate in the shadows, shaping your choices without your conscious awareness. Until you identify and dismantle them, you’ll continue repeating the same patterns, unknowingly holding yourself back.

The path to freedom is a three-step belief rewriting protocol:

1. Shine a Light. Pay close attention to your self-talk and the stories you tell yourself about what you’re capable of. When you catch a limiting belief, write it down. Make it visible.

2. Challenge the Narrative. Ask yourself: “Is this really true? Is there any real evidence to support it?” Most limiting beliefs crumble under even basic scrutiny. “I need more experience,” do you? Or is that what you’ve been told? What evidence do you have that you’re ready right now?

3. Replace and Reinforce. Swap out the limiting belief for an empowering one. Create affirmations that align with your new identity, write them down, say them out loud daily. Over time, these affirmations become your new internal script, replacing the negative narratives that once held you back.

And when your inner critic starts chattering, deploy the “I Am Done With That” declaration. Say it with conviction. Slam the door. And recommit to your CBD identity.

The Broken Rung and the Case for Self-Directed Leadership Development

McKinsey’s decade of research has documented what they call “the broken rung”, the critical first promotion to manager where women fall behind and never catch up. Their 2024 10th-anniversary report found that at the current pace of change, parity for all women in senior leadership is almost 50 years away.

The report recommended that companies “finally fix the broken rung, invest more resources in developing women leaders, and hold themselves accountable for more substantive progress in senior-leadership roles.” These are important institutional recommendations. But they depend on companies choosing to act, and the trend line on corporate commitment to gender diversity is heading in the wrong direction.

This is why CBD matters at the individual level. You cannot control whether your company fixes the broken rung. You cannot control whether your manager advocates for your promotion. You cannot control whether the institutional pipeline treats you fairly.

But you can control your commitment. You can control who you’re being. You can control what you’re doing.

CBD doesn’t replace the need for institutional change. But it ensures that you aren’t waiting for that change to arrive before you start becoming the leader you’re capable of being. It’s the self-directed bypass of the broken rung, not because you leap over it, but because you build your own ladder.

Why CBD Matters More for Women

I want to be direct about something: CBD isn’t just a nice personal development framework. For women in leadership, it’s a strategic necessity.

Here’s why.

The HBR research by Ibarra, Ely, and Kolb showed that the subtle barriers women face in organizations disrupt the very identity work that leadership development requires. Women aren’t just dealing with external obstacles, they’re dealing with an identity gap that institutional mentoring and sponsorship programs alone can’t solve.

The researchers recommended three specific actions: educate women and men about second-generation gender bias, create safe “identity workspaces” to support transitions to bigger roles, and anchor women’s development efforts in their sense of leadership purpose rather than in how they are perceived.

CBD directly addresses all three recommendations:

Education: Understanding the Have-Do-Be trap is understanding second-generation bias in action. When you recognize that you’ve been waiting for institutional validation to see yourself as a leader, you’ve identified the bias operating in your own thinking.

Identity workspace: CBD practice creates a daily identity workspace. Every morning recommitment, every before-meeting identity check, every evening reflection is an opportunity to develop and refine your leadership identity outside the constraints of organizational culture.

Purpose-anchored development: The commitment step of CBD anchors everything in your “what” and “why”, your purpose, not your performance reviews. This is exactly what the HBR research recommends.

But what happens when women don’t have access to the role models and sponsors that accelerate identity development? When the senior leaders around them don’t look like them, don’t lead like them, and don’t face the same challenges?

CBD becomes self-directed identity construction. You don’t need institutional permission to commit. You don’t need a mentor’s approval to be. You don’t need a sponsor’s endorsement to do.

You need your own commitment. Your own clarity. Your own courage.

And that’s something no broken rung, no second-generation bias, and no institutional inertia can take away from you.

The CBD Daily Practice

Here’s how to implement CBD as a daily operating system, not a one-time exercise.

Morning (5 minutes):

Recommit to your identity. Who are you being today? Say it out loud.

Write your affirmations. Speak them. Feel them.

Ask: “What would the leader I’m committed to being do first today?”

Before Every Meeting or Decision:

Quick identity check: “Am I about to act from my current identity or my committed identity?”

If current: pause, breathe, and shift to CBD mode.

If committed: proceed with confidence.

Evening (5 minutes):

Review the day through the CBD lens: “Where did I show up as my committed identity today? Where did I default to old patterns?”

No judgment. Just awareness. Tomorrow is another opportunity to practice.

Weekly (15 minutes):

Assess: “Am I living in CBD this week, or have I slipped back into Have-Do-Be?”

Identify the specific situations where your subconscious mind won.

Plan how to handle those situations differently next week.

From Personal Practice to Organizational Transformation

While CBD starts as a personal operating system, its effects ripple outward. When you show up as the leader you’ve committed to being, you change the dynamics of every room you walk into. You model a different way of operating for the women (and men) around you. You create evidence that challenges limiting beliefs not just in your own mind, but in your organization’s culture.

This is the multiplier effect of CBD. One woman operating in Commit-Be-Do mode doesn’t just transform her own career. She creates a proof point that challenges the Have-Do-Be assumptions embedded in organizational culture. She demonstrates that leadership identity isn’t something conferred by titles and promotions, it’s something practiced and embodied.

And when multiple women in an organization begin operating in CBD mode simultaneously? That’s not just personal development. That’s cultural transformation.

The Revolution Starts With You

By flipping the script and embracing Commit-Be-Do, you become the architect of your success story, not a character reacting to circumstances.

Imagine for a moment that you’re the CEO of your dream business empire. You’re focused on growth, not scrambling to fix cracks in a wobbly foundation. You make strategic decisions that propel you toward long-term success, not because someone gave you permission, but because you committed to being that person.

The CBD Operating Approach isn’t just applicable to your business, it works in every area of your life. Want a clutter-free desk? Commit to being an organized person right now. Want to be a confident public speaker? Start acting like one, research relentlessly, rehearse with passion, and envision yourself captivating the audience.

Ditch the “have-to” mentality. First commit to being the person you want to become, and then watch your actions and your life transform around you.

This is the revolution. And it starts with three words:

Commit. Be. Do.

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Stacey St. John is a Certified Stagnation Assassin Consultant and the bestselling author of LIVE BIG. She created the Energy Armor and Loyalty Loop frameworks to help women leaders protect their energy while building teams that thrive. Learn more at her website.

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Gusto, “2025 New Business Formation Report: Women Are on Par with Men as Side Hustles & Remote Work Decline,” April 2025. https://gusto.com/resources/gusto-insights/new-business-formation-report-2025

World Economic Forum, “Advancing Gender Parity in Entrepreneurship: Strategies for a More Equitable Future,” January 2025. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/advancing-gender-parity-in-entrepreneurship-strategies-for-a-more-equitable-future/

Ibarra, H., Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015 (Updated Edition, 2023).